Polyester fiberfill (sometimes referred to as polyester fiberfilling material) has become well accepted as a reasonably inexpensive filling and/or insulating material for pillows, cushions and other furnishing materials, including bedding materials, and in apparel, and in manufactured and used in large quantities commercially. For many of these uses, as disclosed, e.g., in Tolliver, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,772,137, Stanistreet, 4,068,036, Scott, 4,129,675, Pamm, 4,281,042, and Frankosky, 4,304,817, it has been desirable to make bonded batts, e.g., by spraying a resin-bonding agent, usually of an acrylic polymer, or by blending the polyester fiberfill with binder fibers, which are fibers of polymers having a lower melting or softening point, i.e., lower than that of the polyester fiberfill, and have the capability to adhere to and bond the polyester fiber.
To improve the aesthetics of polyester fiberfill, it has often proved desirable to "slicken" the fiberfill with a coating of durable (e.g., wash-resistant) coating, that has usually been a silicone, i.e., a cured polysiloxane, as disclosed, e.g., by Hofmann, U.S. Pat. No. 3,271,189, Mead et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,454,422, Ryan, U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,217, Salamon et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,146,674, and Takemoto Oil & Fat Co. Ltd., Japanese Published Patent Application No. 58-214,585 (1983), or other types as in copending application Ser. No. 07/180,150, filed by Marcus, April 13, 1988, now allowed, and in the prior art referred to above.
In practice, polyester fiberfill is generally inserted into and used within an outer covering, referred to as a shell fabric, sometimes, or ticking. A potentially serious problem has been leakage, or percolation, of the polyester fibers through the shell cover. This can be particularly serious in the case of insulated garments, because of the frequent flexing of portions of the garment, and the polyester fibers may form unslightly pills that detract from the appearance of the article. Hitherto, it is believed that, in practice, this tendency to leak fibers has been countered by use of a resin-bonding agent or by a non-woven scrim to assist in retaining the individual fibers and prevent leakage, i.e., to seal the outer surface. However, resin-bonding has not been satisfactory when commercially-available slickened polyester fiberfill has been used, because the resin-bonding agents do not adhere to silicone-slickened polyester fiberfill. Even when unslickened polyester fiberfill has been used, if sufficient resin-bonding agent is used, the result has often been unsatisfactory in the sense that the use of sufficient resin-bonding agent leads to a stiff, harsh product, so that one is faced with the dilemma of choosing between a stiff, harsh product or an unsolved leakage problem, i.e., an unsealed outer surface. The use of a non-woven scrim inside the shell fabric has sometimes provided a satisfactory answer to the leakage problem, but has been expensive both in regard to the cost of the non-woven scrim, in the sense of added material costs, and added processing and handling costs, and sometimes, depending on what has been used, can sometimes give an undesirably stiff result.
So, for a long time, a need has existed for solving the leakage problem in articles filled with polyester fiberfill, without incurring the disadvantages of prior attempts to solve this problem.